Activision have announced that Doom 3's multiplayer capabilities will be demonstrated at this year's QuakeCon event.

QuakeCon attendees will have the chance to play DOOM 3’s four-player Deathmatch on a level co-developed by id Software and U.K.-based developer Splash Damage, Ltd. Splash Damage has most recently worked with id Software on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and will be co-developing DOOM 3’s multiplayer levels.

This is the first formal confirmation about Doom 3's multiplayer functionality.

they better focus on scaring the crap out of players, cause fast paced frag fest wont work this time.

So it makes you wonder what elements of the game are holding it back until the new year... Going on this the multiplayer element is *show worthy* which is encouraging, I can't wait to see all the shakeycams of it :p Big john must be cooking up something special in the single player department then...

There is jism everywhere, I can't wait!

A new id game for me to own you guys at :D

mmmmm i wonder what it will be like.. i reckon slow paced deathmatch cause it wont have the pyshics of q3.

they better focus on scaring the crap out of players, cause fast paced frag fest wont work this time.

Scaring players in 4 player multiplayer? f*** you just cant help yourself can you.

4 player dm? i am assuming that this is just because its a test or "beta" version? 4 players? that CANT be enough.

fast-paced frag fests are where it's at

(From the link), Todd Hollenshead: "While everyone knows that DOOM 3 is the most terrifying and scary single player experience ever created ...

(emphasis mine)

We do? None of us have even played an official demo of it (don't say what
is on your mind right now), so we are meant to make this assumption based
on some screenshots and some in-game video?

Comeon, I know the game is going to be entertaining and groundbreaking
like their previous major titles, but I'm getting sick of this over-inflated hype.

Everyone knows Doom III is better than Half-Life 2 Fireblood

Tim Willits (lead designer) said that multiplayer will have DM and Last Man Standing modes, with a focus on stealthy running-and-gunning using the shadows cast by the lights and your flashlight.

Now isn't that an "In your face" to the people who've been claiming that Doom3 will have no multiplayer capabilities at all :)

Didn't they say in another review that the multiplayer would be scaleable based on CPU and network power. So they may only be demoing with four players for ease of setup (and to minimize possible crashes :)

It's good stuff though. I like the idea of seeing someone's shadow before they come around the corner. That's a cool idea.

what the hell are you on about Dan?

So is it 4 player because they cant be bothered to support more or 4 player because the game isnt network friendly? Personally I dont think a 4 player game would be very fun then again I havnet seen it yet so it might be interesting what they come up with.

Its 4 player because multiplayer isn't a focus of the game

I heard a nasty rumour that an open beta of Doom III is going to be released at Comdex...maybe it might be these few MP levels as a taste of things to come?

Even though they are going to extend the 'gold' time wouldn't it be good to have even a tech demo/MP levels out there for the massess to gauge just how uber they have to make their machines before release?

fingers crossed....

can someone tell me why the company which practically invented online, multi-player FPS gaming doesn't want to focus on the multi-player aspect ?

why are we even here ? It seems if ID software had their way we would all be offline playing single-player games :/

4 player dm? i am assuming that this is just because its a test or "beta" version? 4 players? that CANT be enough.

Wow.... where have you been?

what the hell are you on about Dan?

You come into a thread about a doom multiplayer test saying that they better focus on scaring people rather than fast paced frag fest.

Seriously, just shut the f*** up.

Well from what I have gleaned from the huge amount of stuff I have read from ID sources and such its the engine..apparently its doing SO much in the funky department its going to be really hard for it to draw soo many entitiies onscreen at the same time and have all the uber effects running that MP would chunk it down to a slideshow...hence the focus on single player and not so many baddies on the screen at any one point in time...more a cerebral effort than a fragfest. Don't expect tp enter a room and have a horde of imps ready to rock and roll as in the classic. :(

bring back Quake is what I say!

The Ritual guys have their work cut out for them.....

Read: Ravensoft ;)

I thought Q4 was gonna be the next multiplayer installment from them.

There's something about Doom 3 that doesn't look right for multiplay. Maybe it's the chunky sized weapons?

ooopps yey them...

:)

I'm tired ok.

so, who has an amd 6000 or a p6/6ghz pc to run this latest and greatest game smoothly...

oh, and lets not forget the 5gig of ram, the faster than the eye can see video card, etc... etc... :P

Thank arse they came to their senses and added MP functionality.

One of the true gems of Doom and Doom II was Co-operative play.

Besides that, something new and bigger than anything needs to take over the competitive gaming scene.

4 person MP would be unique and cool. Whether that's just a preliminary decision or not.

I would also imagine the network traffic may be a limiter, thus the small number.

They said 4 players is not an arbitrary limit. Theoretically it'll be able to support more than that given more CPU power and plenty of network bandwidth. I wouldn't hold my breath for Coop multiplayer in D3 (I'd love to see it in there though) cos they said they wouldn't do that. It would involve lots of level redesign because it's tuned for single player.

yeah, d3 will be a mofo to play multi methinks...

every1 will have major laggage without über-PC's

Thank arse they came to their senses and added MP functionality.

They never got rid of it. That was just a bunch of dumb people misinterpreting them.

I would also imagine the network traffic may be a limiter, thus the small number.

The network traffic shouldn't really be any different from something like Quake 3. All the added detail is going to be happening client-side.

yeah thats awesome. delete my post.

The network traffic shouldn't really be any different from something like Quake 3. All the added detail is going to be happening client-side.

Not exactly. D3 is supposedly implementing a P2P network system,
and coupled with the intensive physics engine in-use, I doubt you would
get very good performance, in let's say a map where 7 people are firing
rockets and shotguns (many many projectiles/traces in progress)...

The network information required to update the world on all the clients' machines
would be tremendous (assuming ID won't sacrifice the accuracy of the physics
engine for network performance) unless they implement some very good client-side
prediction/calculations (as you say)

So either the physics (,etc) accuracy has to drop, or the network performance. That's the way I see it.

(Edited a million times)

bring on gigabit networks!

4 player should be fine. but still, where's the co-op?! nuts.

The way they are doing bullets is that each bullet is an actual model, and an entity with all the right attributes as a real bullet, each single bullet, so that is what is taking up a lot of network speed.

Certain Q3 mods already do things like that (navy seals), and so did the crusty old quake 2 hyperlagger. It isn't as bad on network traffic as you'd think.

Navt Seals rocked...I dunno how it would go but i would love to see that mod done on the new engine.

Certain Q3 mods already do things like that (navy seals), and so did the crusty old quake 2 hyperlagger. It isn't as bad on network traffic as you'd think.

It is a bigger deal when the network system is peer-to-peer as my previous
post mentioned and assuming you don't have a very good uplink to broadcast that data to your peers.

IE, it would be hard on players, as there is no centralised server
with huge bandwidth updating the other users as to your actions (like current client/server models do)
Rather, you have users on cable/dsl/dialup having their uploads saturated, etc (~12-16KB/s)

I'm not pretending to know exactly how D3 is coded, but can only make a [somewhat] educated guess *shrugs* :)

I'm getting sick of this over-inflated hype

ditto.



/me considers alternate point of view


I wonder what Carmack thinks? Now there's a guy waiting for today's gaming hardware to double - if not triple. He has so much to offer in terms of detailed gaming engines, yet all too often his ideas are far too complex for the average gaming pc to run I'll bet.

I wonder how he feels punching out game after game knowing that he has to keep it scalable to today's machines so as not to distance the title from too many perspective buyers? Man - that must s*** him to tears. I know it would s*** me!

JC's gotta be one of the most patient blokes on the face of the Earth.

either way - Id can keep pumping out somewhat less-than-evolutionary games for all I care. I'm happy knowing that once computer hardware reaches a point that JC can unleash something mindblowing... he will.


Doom3 aint it (so far as I can tell).


Bring on the P4 5Gig :)

Hmm... my 2 cents,

P2P for multiplayer seems ass, shoot one bullet... output 3 times over the network..... compared to the usual 1 time. LAN will be alright... but 56kers... no luck (Telstra... wheres my DSL!)

Laterz
LA

4 player DM = awesome 2 vs 2 as far as I'm concerned

Scaring you would be cool though. Imaging having your arm ripped off and have to continue fragin' while your blood is gushing out and some kind of filth hound of hades smells the trail and... It'd be different to the norm multiplayer having added annoyances like that. On the other hand, who cares?

i'm with koopz, today's hardware seems to have slowed somewhat... especially in the video market, i mean shouldn't the budget card of today be the gf3 and gf4 series cards not that hunk of s*** gf4mx440 or fx5200, nVidia have alot to answer to...

Isn't JC calling it a day after Doom 3? That's what I heard anyways...

more like

Player 2 fired weapon at co-ordinants (x,y,z)
weapon type blah
weapon vector (x1,y1,z1)
player velocity blahblah

bit more to it than that.

more like

Player 2 fired weapon at co-ordinants (x,y,z)
weapon type blah
weapon vector (x1,y1,z1)
player velocity blahblah

bit more to it than that.

That is a very good summary of what they would have to transmit.

Whereas in the current client/server model, all the player would upload
to the server is:

+attack command (or similar)
current view-vector

and I guess the firing player's position is interpolated server-side via the lag-compensation code.

Something like that, not much data :)

(Edit: you can replace lag-compensation code with umm .. something else, because I just remembered that many games with the exception of half-life and a few others don't have any lag compensation)

When a client fires, it sends the command to the server. The server then creates a bullet enitiy and that is sent back to the client, who will probably create a simulated bullet entity, that will do everything the bullet entity is doing on the server (well close enough...)
Whenever the server bullet entity interacts with anything it tells that to client, it also updates its position every so often. The client will then fudge the client side bullet entity to match what the server tells it.
The longer you go without updating the clients simulated functions the more out of whack it will get, that is why sometimes you see an object or a person suddenly skip. (Quakes are good at client side prediction so you dont see it much).

That is based off how quake 3 does it (to the best of my memory, which rereading I think is pretty wrong haha).

Unreal does it sort of the same, except instead of sending the entire gamestate for each server frame, it sends parts of it. Each entity is ranked acording to certain rules, the higher ranked info gets sent before the lower ranked stuff.
A player would be a high ranking entity, while the fish that swim around in the water would be a very low ranked entity..
I'm not sure how half-life does it, but I rekon it'd be similar to quake.


Anyways, sifnt 2 vs 2. The team work would be going off!